NewsGator launches social business solutions for key vertical markets

First up: a solution for improving manufacturing collaboration, communications and innovation based on the Microsoft DIRA framework.

NewsGator today announced plans and successes in bringing enterprise-class social computing solutions to four key vertical industries: manufacturing, financial services, retail/consumer packaged goods (CPG) and telecommunications. NewsGator begins the initiative with a focus on discrete and process manufacturers. As a first step, the company just published a whitepaper entitled Using Social Business Solutions to Empower Connected Manufacturing Organizations, which defines how NewsGator helps manufacturers improve business efficiency through social computing.

The NewsGator manufacturing solution is based on the Microsoft Discrete Manufacturing Reference Architecture (DIRA), which provides a technology framework for improving manufacturing operational performance. NewsGator’s Social Sites software works within the DIRA framework to deliver specialized social business capabilities that enhance productivity and business performance through employee empowerment, collaboration and communication.

“NewsGator lets manufacturers who embrace the Microsoft DIRA framework not only create social profiles and collaborate within communities, but also contribute to the company’s knowledge base from anywhere in the world via the web or mobile devices,” said Sanjay Ravi, managing director, Worldwide Discrete Manufacturing, Microsoft Corp. “Empowering workers and aligning their roles with business processes spurs ideas and product innovation, enables faster decision making, filters and routes relevant information to the right people, recognizes top contributors, and utilizes microblogging and video activity streams to increase productivity and boost profits.”

IM Flash Technologies, a joint venture of Micron Technology and Intel, uses NewsGator in conjunction with Microsoft’s DIRA principles to enhance role-based productivity and mobile connectivity. “Finding a solution like Social Sites that fit perfectly with our SharePoint model was a godsend,” said IM Flash Technologies Corporate Communications Lead, Brian Hunter. “Role-based productivity is huge here. That’s one reason why the NewsGator-SharePoint platform is such an attractive solution. We are a hierarchical organization by nature, and the transparency of social computing can run counter to our very nature. And we realized that being more transparent and opening up new channels of communication across the enterprise can help us achieve those goals.”

NewsGator’s social capabilities have already solved big business challenges for many major manufacturers such as Fujitsu, Goodrich, IM Flash Technologies, Lam Research, Renault, Siemens, and Trelleborg. According to industry reports, key business challenges driving social adoption in these organizations include the need to innovate new products and processes faster across organizational and geographical boundaries, improve operation performance and business reliability, and attract and grow more global customers.

“NewsGator integrates effortlessly into the Microsoft software stack and extends it to broaden information sharing, learning, expertise discovery, onboarding, customer service and product innovation, among many other operational improvements,” said Melissa Risteff, SVP of Global Marketing & Alliances. “Manufacturers can now soar beyond the constraints of their strictly controlled IT systems with new social capabilities that make them more agile, adaptable and more competitive.”

NewsGator, which develops social business software for Microsoft platforms, is already deployed in a wide range of industries with more than 4 million paid users. But the company has gained particularly significant expertise in helping many Global 2000 clients in the four specific vertical markets of manufacturing, financial services, retail/CPG and telecommunications to improve collaboration, communications and innovation through social computing and their own in-house domain expertise. The company is harnessing this institutional knowledge and packaging it into verticalized social business solutions, giving new clients a vertical-specific on-ramp for accelerating their deployments, processes and user engagements. NewsGator’s next vertical industry solution guide on social technology in banking, capital markets, and insurance will be released this fall.

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